Page - 112 - in The Priority of Locomotion in Aristotle’s Physics

into one larger drop of water.110 This is what happens when a mixture (μίξις) is being formed; different portions of different elements are com- bined into a whole new product. The process of mixing, however, is expli- citly identified by Aristotle as an aggregation.111 Yet, we would not say that from the condensation of a portion of earth and another one of fire flesh comes to be.112 This process is for Aristotle an aggregation, but nonetheless a portion of flesh that came to be by means of aggregation may very well undergo condensation once again. The same is true of rarefaction. When Aristotle says that a portion of water becomes rarefied he is not referring to a process in which it is divided into other separate portions of water. Furthermore, the passages in which μάνωσις is used suggest that he rather seems to be thinking of a change in which the underlying thing expands without loosing its basic sense of unity. This process of course may ultimately lead to the destruction of this whole. But if it were destroyed in the sense that it came to lack its sense of unity, this would no longer be a rarefaction, but could still be appropriately be called a segregation—for this is exactly what happens when composite sub- stances perish and are dissolved into more basic components. Even though processes of rarefaction certainly are involved when a body is decomposed, it would be absurd to say that this decomposition is merely a rarefaction. This dissolution of the mixture is a segregation. One reason why Aristotle uses the terms condensation and rarefaction to describe alteration could then be that describing it in terms of aggregation and segregation may suggest that a change in quality might involve the seg- regation, and potentially the corruption, of the change’s subject—a conclu- sion Aristotle surely wants to avoid. 4.4.6 What changes in quality changes with respect to place As I have already stated in the chapter on the relation between substantial change and locomotion, every case of aggregation and segregation is accompanied by a change in place of its fundamental material components. Since condensation and rarefaction are aggregations and segregations, it is clear that these phenomena are connected with change in place in the same way. Accordingly, alteration also necessarily involves change in place in the sense that whenever an alteration occurs a change in place with respect to the fundamental material components or parts must occur as well. That 110 See GC I 2, 317a27–29. 111 See GC I 6, 322b8. 112 See Met. VIII 17, 1041b13–14, where it is stated that fire and earth are the elements of flesh. 112 Locomotion necessarily accompanies each of the other kinds of change ISBN Print: 9783525253069 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647253060 © 2014, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen